Coach Receives Jail, Probation

CENTRAL FLORIDA - The Area - In Brief - SEMINOLE

June 28, 2002

SANFORD -- A former Lyman High School girls basketball coach accused of having sex with two girls on his team was sentenced Thursday to 90 days in jail and 15 years' probation.

The only reason Bruce Grant Bonaventure II didn't go to prison was because both victims, who were 17 when he had sex with them, said they didn't want him there, said Assistant State Attorney Stewart Stone.

FOR THE RECORD - ********** CORRECTION PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2003 **********Items in The Area-In Brief feature on Page B3 of the Local & State section June 28, 2002, and this past Saturday about Bruce Grant Bonaventure II, who pleaded guilty last year to having sex with two underage students, misstated his sentence. He was sentenced to nine months in jail and 15 years' probation.*********************************************************

Bonaventure, 34, taught business courses at the school and coached there for eight years. He confessed shortly after he was arrested and was fired the following month.

Stone said Bonaventure had sex with one 17-year-old girl for a month in 1998. Two years later, he did the same thing with another 17-year-old.

Another Lyman teacher, a former player on Bonaventure's team and his wife all asked Circuit Judge Alan Dickey for leniency.

"My husband has done so many good things in his life," said wife Gina Bonaventure.

Bruce Bonaventure also apologized to the victims and their families. "I made a mistake," he said. "I've hurt many people."

The judge, though, stuck by the terms of a June 13 plea deal and gave him the maximum it allowed.

He told the former teacher he also must now register as a sexual predator.